Andrew Golis

A quick point related to my Tuesday post “The New York Times and the rules of war.“  When I write that part of the Times’ problem is that they developed “a journalistic ethos of detachment,” I’m not arguing that The Times needs to drop their aspirations to objectivity.

Rather, I’m arguing that they should stop thinking objectivity and detachment are the same thing.  They can aspire to not favoring conservative or ideological argument and aggressively engage simultaneously.

Look at what Campbell Brown is trying to do.  Sounding like a blogger, she’s dismissing the false objectivity of “equal time,” if the arguments being reported on aren’t equally based in fact.  She’s styling herself as someone who’s willing to call bullshit when she sees it (exhibit A: taking apart Tucker Bounds when he absurdly tried to defend Sarah Palin’s national security cred). And, unlike The Times, she’s doesn’t cowardly use euphemisms when pointing out race-baiting. She’s describing reality, without biasing any ideology, as she clearly as she can. Not standing back from it to avoid controversy.

The result? She’s doing her journalistic duty and creating political problems for people who lie and smear and going viral in the process.

Nothing she’s done has actually been liberal or conservative. In this case McCain/Palin have just been in more need of truth-squading. But traditionally, she’d be backed down by CNN execs cowed by political pressure from the Right and the prospect of losing the appearance of objectivity. But so far, probably because it’s been good for business, she’s pushing ahead.

The New York Times, naturally, ran a story claiming she was “tacking toward commentary.” They’d be wise to watch her and realize that distinguishing between lies and falsehoods and forcing the liars to pay a political price isn’t “commentary,” it’s just good, engaged, journalism.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 9th, 2008 at 11:20 am and is filed under management, media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.